Harsh Existence
by Lia Star
Summary: Split up from the rest of the scooby gang and now living as a vampire's pet, this is the life of Willow Rosenberg.
1. Chapter One

**A/N**: Ok, I really should be updating some of my other stories, but I tried to last night and nothing came to me and then I just started writing this and decided to post it. Please review if you like it, because I need to know I'm not the only one enjoying it. I won't update unless I have at least 5 reviews for this one chapter, so please, make it happen .

**Disclaimer**: I can't think of a witty way to say I own nothing to do with the characters in Buffy so I'll just have to settle with saying that I own nothing to do with the characters of Buffy. Twice.

**Rating**: PG (or whatever the new equivalent is) for now. However I'm going to be moving it up to an R soon, but you will have warning.

**_Harsh Existence - Chapter 1_**

She looked into the mirror and what was reflected back at her was a shadow of her former self. She had aged quickly, far too quickly for her age and she doubted that this aging process would slow down at all, well not naturally anyway. Even if she was aging quickly, it didn't mean she was ugly, far from it, he wouldn't have kept her this long if she was. She stared back at the hollow eyes that followed her where ever she went until she blinked and looked away from the mirror.

Turning away from the mirror she looked around her room. Her room? That was a joke, nothing was hers, it all belonged to him and it always would. A large king sized bed dominated the center of the room, its black silk sheets were tucked neatly under the corners of the matress, there wasn't a crease in sight.

The rest of the bedroom consisted of a writing desk, which had her writing equipment layed out neatly in a straight row, all of the pencils sharpened to a point of perfection. Opposite the desk was a dressing table, and there was also a walk in wardrobe, a large bookcase and a door to her ensuite bathroom.

Taking one last look in the mirror she stood up from her cross legged seat on the floor and looked around the room once more. It never looked like a real bedroom, no matter how much time she spent here, perhaps it was the fact that it was so neat and tidy, there was never a single thing out of place. Whenever she had spare time alone in her room the first thing she would do was to tidy it, picking up random pieces of rubbish, items that had rolled off her desk and, of course, clothes. There were always clothes on her floor, he wasn't patient enough to place them neatly in a pile, they always landed on the nearest space of available floor.

Patience. Something he didn't posses any of, or not nearly enough. Patience is a virtue, only problem was he didn't care about any kind of virtue, he lived a simple enough life as he had explained to her many times before. Want. Take. Have. Such an easy way to live, and it was an easy lifestyle that suited him, only problem was the people that were affected by the choices that he made, not that he actually cared enough to stop and think about them, but she did.

That was her problem, he said. She cared. She tried not to, as he had said many times before, why should she? The people she cared for her never gave her a passing thought so why should she spare her thoughts for them? She couldn't help it, but she didn't know why. He did. He said it was because she was so kind, so innocent. That's why he liked her. Innocence. Something very few people have for very long, but something so many people spend their lives searching for.

She walked over to the bed and smoothed out an imaginary crease before sitting down on the smooth silk. Her life was so complicated yet so simple at the same time. Do as he says. Should be simple enough, only it wasn't, not always. Sometimes it could be, those few times when he would lead her into an oblivion and she didn't have to have any thoughts. He could keep her in that oblivion if he wanted to, he could break her, bend and mould her completely to his will. But he didn't. He said he liked her how she was. He liked that her mind hadn't changed, not really, she still thought about everything, every little action, even though most of these thoughts caused her pain.

And that was why he let her keep her thoughts to herself, mostly. Sometimes he would make her share, if he was bored. But most of the time these thoughts stayed in her head causing her more and more pain. He liked her pain, the way it reflected on her face. She hid a lot of things from him, or at least tried to, but her pain was one thing she could never conceal from him for long, and when she tried to hide it? It either amused him further or angered him beyond reason, it all depended on what mood he was in.

His moods were always so hard to decipher, just when she thought she'd worked out his current mood, it changed, just like that. He said he liked to keep her on her toes. Then he'd laugh and say he prefered her on her back. She didn't find his jokes funny, others did, but she could never find the humour in them.

She hated him. That was one thing she knew for certain, that was the simple part of her life. That was, however, where her clear, straight mind ended. After that there were endless shades of grey that just went on and on. She wanted him, craved him, needed him. She knew she shouldn't, but it was so hard not to, he was her world, there was nothing else other than him. Or so he said, but she knew otherwise.

He could be nice sometimes, so sweet, gentle and caring. She knew he didn't care about her, she wasn't stupid or naive enough to think anything else, but when he had those moments she accepted whatever kindness he had to offer, it may not be real, but it was real enough for her and if it meant that she could spend a night with him holding her and stroking her hair as she cried herself to sleep, who was she to complain? Not that complaining would get her anywhere.

She knew the rest of her life, and possibly her death, would be spent with him and she knew that her life would never return to how it used to be. Despite her bleak outlook on life she hadn't broke as many others in a similar position to her had. She had never stopped fighting, she gave in plenty of times, but occasionally she'd just remind him that she was still in there, beneath the exterior that was seen by many others as nothing more than a doll, a pretty doll, but still just a doll.

She distantly heard a door slam downstairs. That gave no sign to his mood, he slammed doors all the time. She knew it was him though, she could hear the others in the living room below her, complaining at the loud noises he produced where ever he went. She could practically see the roll of his eyes as he explained that closing doors quietly was no fun.

She had picked up a good sense of hearing over the years, much better than the hearing of your average human, but she had had to. It was no fun being caught unaware, she had learnt that lesson the hard way, several times over. She heard him stomping up the steps, that wasn't a good sign, it usually meant that he had been ordered to do something he didn't want to do, and when he was in a bad mood things never turned out well, at least not for her.

She stood up once more and smoothed out the bed until no one would have known she had even been sat on it and slowly bent her knees until she was kneeling on the floor with her head raised. He never made her bow her head, unless of course he was punishing her, trying to impress someone, or of course, if he was bored.

Her posture was immaculate, she'd had enough practise at it in the past two years that it came as naturally to her as breathing and she could hold it for hours if she had to.

The door slammed open and she realised that she had been right, he was in a bad mood. He wasn't angry, he was easy to deal with when he was, she was normally knocked unconcious within five minutes. But today he was calm and collected, and when he was calm she knew she should worry and he knew the exact thoughts that were going around her head at the moment as his face spread into a large smirk.

He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground next to him. She lowered her hands to the ground and crawled slowly over to him. Of all the things she had been through since she had arrived crawling was still the one that managed to humiliate her the most which, considering what she had been through, could be seen as rather stupid. He knew it as well, which was exactly why he made sure she crawled on her hands and knees to him as many times as possible each day.

As she reached his feet she lifted her arms back up off the ground and returned to her kneeling posture. He looked at her for a moment longer before taking a peice of her hair and tugging it harshly towards the door and letting it drop as he strode out the room with her crawling at one pace behind him.

And so began another night of pain and humiliation for William the Bloody's pet, Willow Rosenberg.


	2. Chapter Two

**A/N**: I got my 5 reviews . Go you! Anyway, yeah I'm updating, not particuarly quickly, but not as slowly as some of my other stories... So, same as usual, I need 5 reviews before I continue so I know enough people are reading this and enjoying it...

Feel free to let me know what you like about it, what you aren't so keen on, what you would like to see happen, anything you feel would improve the story!

Oh and this chapter should be longer than my normal chapters, as following areview from someone on one of my other stories about having to wait a while for an update and then just getting a short chapter, I am working on improving the length of all of my updates...

**Harsh Existence - Chapter Two**

Willow followed him through the large oak door and to the stairs. His pace didn't change in the slightest as he reached the stairs, however he was going down them on two feet, Willow however, had to crawl down them.

It wasn't as hard as it looked not after as much practise as she had had, though the first few times she had tried it she had fell, he would catch her if she was too high up on the stairs, but if she could fall and not do any serious damage to herself, he would let her. He would stand at the bottom of the stairs and laugh as she tumbled down them and then give her a kick until she went to the top and started all over again.

That hadn't happened recently though, something she was thankful for. When you had very little to be thankful for, the small things began to matter a lot more. He was leaning at the bottom of the stairs with a smirk on his face as he waited for her to finish the last few steps. When she had he tilted her head up to an impossible angle so he could look her in the eyes.

"Up." When she had first came here, his short one word orders had often confused her and he'd use it as an excuse to punish her for her defiance, even though he knew she wasn't defying him, just trying to puzzle out what he wanted. She'd questioned him on this once, and instead of the beating she had expected to get she'd had a simple reply of 'Because it's fun' and he had left it at that.

A raised eyebrow reminded her that she was supposed to be following orders and she promptly stood up, he didn't say anything about her making him wait, he knew how she would occasionally get lost in her own thoughts, she was normally thinking about the past when she did, of her friends.

Once she had stood up he turned around and walked into the living room and she followed him. He sat himself down on the nearest chair and nodded to the floor next to his leg where she sat herself down without the slightest hint of defiance, she knew which battles she would never win.

Once she was seated at his feet she took the chance to look around the room. Drusilla gave her a childish wave when she looked at her and Angelus spared no more than a flicker of his eyes from William to her and then back to William again. Darla wasn't there, though Darla wasn't around that often she was always busy sorting out vampire 'stuff' as William often put it. She wasn't exactly sure what this meant, but she had grasped onto the fact that baisically Darla had to make sure everyone else within the Order of Aurilius was doing what they were meant to be and was content that Angelus would keep London under control.

She felt a hand against her shoulder as William applied some 'gentle' pressure against it making her lean on him. William certainly had a different definition of the word gentle than she did, but when she had pointed this out he had shown her what his version of not gentle was. That was the only time she ever brought that conversation topic up.

"So, why does she have to be down here?"

"You don't think she has the right to know?"

"She has whatever rights I choose to give her."

That was mostly William's opinion on everything to do with her, she couldn't however work out why Angelus was disagreeing with him on this, he normally left any decisions that were made about her to the younger vampire. Whatever was going on, appeared to be about her though, only she had no idea what was going on, and if it had been planned the vampire's had managed to keep quiet about it around her, not that that was exactly hard, if they just wanted to say something they didn't want her to hear she would just be sent away.

They were both looking at her as if she should have some sort of a response, when they all fully knew that both of them would get angry if she spoke without being invited to... It was a lose-lose situation for her.

"We're moving." Moving? That was unexpected, though not the first time they had since she had been here. And they had of course moved before, when Giles had set fire to the old factory. So, not particuarly surprising, the one thing that was however, was the fact that they were bothering to inform her, as oppose to just telling her to pack her bags, not that there was anything she actually wanted to pack.

"Again." It took her a moment to realise that the slightly annoyed comment was added onto the end of William's comment by Angelus. Last time they had moved it had been from Ireland where William had managed to cause something along the lines of a riot.

"And we're moving to California. Sunnydale, to be precise." There it was, the reason. But Sunnydale? She didn't honestly know if she would be able to cope with that, so close, yet so far. Not that, she supposed, being on the opposite side of the world was any better either.

"So, how do you feel about that Pet?" Willow froze. He had asked her opinion. Just when she thought her life had become mostly manageable, and she generally knew what to expect, he jumped this on her. She had no idea. She had voiced several opinions since living with them, but generally not without consequences. He occasionally asked her opinions on little things, but asking her how she felt about something? That was a new one.

She felt two pairs of enhanced eyes staring at her and she pushed herself further back to the chair and towards William's leg, she curled herself up slightly tighter trying to escape their silent looks. She jumped slightly when she felt William lift her up and sit her on his lap. He pulled her head towards him and rested his chin on top of it. Willow realised that they were still waiting for an answer, only problem was she didn't have one. How was she supposed to tell them what she felt about moving back to Sunnydale when she herself didn't know?

"I'm not sure."

The eyes remained on her a moment longer before they tuned out to her presence and began discussing moving plans, including what they were going to do with her, which was their main concern. Last time they had moved she had made a run for it and almost got run over by a car, the vampires had classed this an accident, but it hadn't been. She had known full well what would happen when she ran in front of the car, had William not pulled her out of the way a split second before the car had gone straight past the spot where she had been stood.

This had earned him a kind of celebrity status in the small town they had been staying in and he had been given plenty of free drinks which had made him happy. And also very drunk, which had not bode well for her when they got back to the small hotel room they were staying in on their way to London.

Eventually she tuned out to their conversation and allowed herself to close her eyes and just feel his arms around her which were strangely comforting when she managed to forget, even just for a few minutes, that she was taking comfort in the arms of a killer. She wasn't going to complain though, the days when he gave her comfort without expecting something in return were few and far between and she took the chance whenever she could.

She woke up some time later but she wasn't in her bed, this didn't really surprise her as she had grown used to waking up in different places, depending on William's mood. She opened her eyes and found a pair staring straight back at her curiously. Drusilla. She gave the insane vampire a small smile which seemed to satisfy her as she stood up and walked out of the room, giving William a small peck on the cheek before closing the door behind her. Willow watched her retreating back before looking around the rest of the room to see if she was in the company of any other vampires.

William was there, but Angelus was no where in sight. Looking around the room for vampires had become a habit she had picked up very early on, it helped her to know who she was with, and how to act. All of the vampires reacted to her in different ways and all expected different behaviour from her, which could be quite difficult when she was in a room with all four of them.

William was pacing, which usually wasn't a good sign. He looked sharply up when he felt her watching him and seemed to take in the picture she made on the bed. She was layed out naked on the bed, like some sort of virgin sacrifice. Or a sacrifice anyway. Having no clothes hardly bothered her anymore. She would still get uncomfortable in the presence of Angelus and Darla, then again she was uncomfortable around them most of the time, clothes or not. Drusilla didn't seem to notice whether or not she was wearing anything and William had beaten it into her that she shouldn't hide anything of his from him, especially her body.

His eyes travelled up and down her body slowly and the smirk graced his face once more. He wasn't wearing anything other than a pair of leather pants as he slowly crawled up the bed and her body with achingly slow movements. He finally rested lightly on top of her for a few minutes before making his move. His hand snaked around the back of her head and tangled itself in her hair, which he gave a sharp pull which made her gasp in pain.

As she opened her mouth in pain he took the chance to attack it with his and slide his tongue in, fully confident that whatever mood she was in that she wouldn't risk biting it. Not after certain lessons they had had about her biting his body parts whilst they were in her mouth, that haad been one of the fews acts of defiance that had actually caused him a deal of pain.

It wasn't love that was shared in the kiss, it wasn't even passion. Willow just lay there with her mouth open, allowing him to do what he liked, which at this precise moment seemed to be licking, kissing and biting ever corner of her mouth. It wasn't a particuarly unpleasant sensation, but it wasn't one that caused her a great deal of pleasure either. William seemed to notice this as he drew back suddenly.

"Isn't a spectator sport Luv, you're not joining in and that's no fun. Lets see what I can do about that then shall we?"

When he gave her any sort of pleasure, it wasn't for her benefit, it was because it entertained and pleased him to have her wanting and needing him, even though she still hated him. That was one of his favourite games, making her beg for him, whilst all the time he knew she wanted nothing more than to knee him in the balls.

He started kissing her again but this time the kisses were gentle. She found herself responding to them almost immediately and as his kissed travelled further down to stomach, missing her breasts completely, she lifted an arm and ran her fingers through his hair, which was soft as he had been too preoccupied with moving to gel it yet today.

He moved down furter and then bit into her thigh. It wasn't a painful experience, he wasn't trying to drain her and she knew that, but even still, she froze the moment his fangs sank into her thigh, but she started moving again when he started to lazily draw on her blood, having a few mouth fulls ebfore retracting his fangs and licking her wound clean.

He placed small kisses up and down her legs and she was soon whimpering for him, which they both knew would happen eventually, sooner rather than later.

She tried pulling his head up towards hers, but she knew it would only move if he wanted it to be moved. Luckily for her he did and she pulled his mouth in for a hungry kiss which went on for half a minute before he pulled back leaving her panting at the sensation. At some point during the kiss her legs had wrapped around his and she was now rubbing against the leather of his pants.

He pulled himself out of the hold of her legs and gave her a grin.

"See, it's so much better with audience participation."

And with that he stood up and walked out the room leaving herself in her own company, practically whimpering in her need for him, all hot and desperate, just how he liked her.


	3. Chapter Three

A/N: I thought I'd put this chapter up a while ago, but obviously not... This chapter was originally going to be a lot darker, but I cwasn't really in the mood, so its much lighter than intended and I don't like it that much... but review and let me know what you think .

For those of you who read my other stories, I'm going to concentrate on updating those a lot shortly, school holidays are practically here, I'm going on holiday for a week this Tuesday, but after that I should have a lot of spare time to write D

Anyway please review, I need at least 5 reviews before i update this story again (sorry for the long time it took me, I thought I'd updated this story before, but it turned out I had to write a couple of chapters more, but that was it)

* * *

This was hell. It had to be. William must have killed her last night without her realising and forgot to turn her. And now she was in hell. Or maybe not, but her current situation was doing a very good impression of being one of the many hell dimensions Angelus liked to talk about so frequently. 

She had behaved, not that misbehaving would have gotten her anywhere, but she had behaved and now they were on the plane. The very long plane journey of which under half an hour had passed. Who the hell had thought up the idea of having three seats in a row on a plane?

William had the window seat, Angelus was the nearest to the center of the plane and Willow was crushed inbetween the pair of them. Drusilla was on the opposite them sat next to a business man who kept trying to edge closer and closer to the window everytime Dru started up a conversation with him.

She was facing her head straight forwards and trying not to move a muscle to remind either vampire of her presence. Both of them looked extremely bored and it was only a matter of time before they found some non-obvious form of entertainment for themselves, most likely involving her. Until they decided just what exactly they were going to do Willow was sat their with William's hand possesivley on her knee and watching all three vampires look hungrily at the other passengers on the flight.

The only cause for entertainment Willow had for the first hour of the journey was the look Angelus gave the air hostess when she asked him if he would like to purchase some headphones to listen to the film, which was apparantly 'Bring it On'. He looked utterly insulted, and she could almost hear him planning to kill her after they got off the plane.

That entertainment for the first hour of the flight, turned out to be her entertainment for the first four hours of the flight, until she eventually dropped off to sleep, careful to keep her body stiff and upright so she didn't start leaning on one of the vampires in her sleep and end up drooling on their shoulders, or just generally annoying them.

She woke up when an amused voice spoke in her ear.

"I wouldn't make any sudden movements if I were you luv."

Willow quickly opened her eyes, but kept to William's advice and didn't move the rest of her body. She found herelf looking into his eyes and he looked highly amused and nodded towards where Angelus was sat. Very slowly she turned her head to look at Angelus and realised that there was a slight pressure on her shoulder.

That pressure, she found out, was actually the head of a sleeping Angelus, doing exactly the thing she had been worried about doing herself. She turned back to William and he gave her a cheeky grin before raising his hand slowly.

Willow stiffened, she knew exactly what he was going to do and it would not leave Angelus in a good mood at all, but he wasn't the one that had to spend the rest of the flight sat next to a very old, powerful and grumpy vampire.

She sent Will a pleading look and he paused the movements of his hand.

"You like spoiling my fun don't you Ducks?" But he lowered his hand away from Angelus' head and Willow breathed a small sigh of relief, before she remembered his comment about spoiling fun, which meant he would be looking for something else that would be fun. He didn't even need to say out loud that he was expecting an alternate form of entertainment from her instead of him hitting Angelus over the head, she knew straight away and nervously glanced around at the rest of the passengers, but none of them were watching them, all asleep, caught up in conversation on the back of the chair in front of them. Willow wasn't surprised to see that there didn't appear to be anyone watching the film.

Out of the corner of her eye shw saw William give her an irritated look as he started to get impatient and she decided the safest thing to do was to distract him from his annoyance, before she could think of anything that would satisfy him and not alert any of the other passengers to anything that they were doing William grabbed her hands and pushed it down his pants.

She clutched him in her hand and he gave a loud groan, making several people turn to stare at them, Willow barely prevented herself from giving him an evil glare, he groaned on purpose, just to embarrass her. He could go for hours without making a single sound when she was sucking him off and he knew she knew, which made it all the more fun for him.

The motions that Willow made with her hand satisfied William enough for him to stop glaring at her and the other passengers, instead he just closed his eyes and relaxed, occasionally moving her hand slightly. Willow also lost herself in her own thoughts, her hand was almost moving by itself, she'd practiced the movements enough in the past.

She was going to Sunnydale. The fact was finally hitting home and she was getting more and more nervous, it had seemed unreal before but now it was actually happening. She was going back to her first home town, where her friends lived, where her parents had died and where she had suffered the worst humiliations and choices of her life.

She could only hope there would be minimal damages by the time they had left, though that was very unlikely, especially where her friends were concerned...


	4. Chapter Four

A/N: Ok, I have been stuck on this chapter but I have to write another chapter. I know where I want the story to go, I'm just not sure how. And I was gonna kind of leave this story even though I do love it but I got an e-mail.

So for those of you who wanted an update it's not me you have to thank, it is the wonderful Tara who sent me an e-mail explaining how amazing I was, or at least the story was, and how could I resist?

I also didn't realise it had been that long since I had updated, but apparantly so. And you should also be grateful I'm writing this as I have the joy of tonsilitus, for the second time in like 4 months. Poor me : (

Warnings: Err... Nothing as of yet, or nothing more than in any previous chapter...

Disclaimer: I own nothing, Joss and the Grr Arg monster are the best. (I think I'm meant to say something witty here, but I can't think of anything)

Dedication: So I've never done a dedication before, but really i had to, because the whole reason I'm writing this chapter is because of Tara. You can also blame her if it's really bad

And on with the story...

/\\/\\/\\

"Duck!"

He dropped to the ground without pausing for a second, knowing by now not to question her instincts, and it was a good thing too, as a scond later a leg swung over him, narrowly missing his head.

However the leg was caught by a firm hand and the owner of the leg was sent flying up against a nearby tree, where a piece of wood was conviniently sticking out and acted as a makeshift stake as the body exploded into dust on impact.

Xander took the offered hand to pull him and rubbed at the back of his head already feeling the bruise start to come up after her had been knocked for about the fith time that evening.

"This is getting ridiculous."

"I know, and to think we thought five vamps in three nights was a bad week. What is that, like the sixth tonight?"

"Mmm..." Buffy trailed off into her own thoughts, thoughts that she didn't particuarly want to be thinking because she knew where they would end up leading her. But they couldn't ignore it.

Xander appeared to have either read her mind, or was just thinking the same thing when he suggested a trip to the library. Buffy looked around guiltily for a few seconds, not really wanting to leave the cemetarys when there were still vampires wandering around, but she didn't have much choice for now.

/\\/\\/\\

"Well I'd hate to state the obvious, but it would appear to me that someone was creating an army of some sort..."

Buffy gave Giles her best 'Duh' look before flicking her gaze back to her nails that she was currently picking to avoid thinking any further into the possibilities of who exactly this person was. Giles had obviously noticed and tried to continue the conversation.

"If someone is building up an army, or possibly just a large selection of minions, then it's likely they are new in town and aiming to gather forces quickly. And at the speed they are managing it I'd say there were either quite a few of them, or they are already well known in this town. Especially considering the fact you couldn't even get anything out of Willy when you went to , ah chat with him earlier on."

"And lets all put on our thinking caps and think of possible suggestions as to who this bad guys might be then... Hmmm, let me think"

"Xander this isn't helping anyone. Especially not Willow."

At the mention of his oldest friend Xander went quiet, the sarcastic comments flew out of the window as reality hit. They hadn't seen Willow for over a year now ((A/N: I can't remember if I mentioned how long in aprevious chapter, a fault for not updating I suppose, so sorry if I've messed up not only Joss' but my own timeline as well)) and thinking about her still hurt as much as it did then.

They knew next to nothing about what had happened, only she hadn't wanted to go with him, yet she had without arguing, which made no sense to them but he supposed there must have been a reason, they just didn't know it yet.

But if they were here, then there was a chance that she would be as well, unlike Giles and Buffy he had refused to believe they had killed her, he'd know, he didn't know how, but he just would. Pushing these feelings back down he lifted his head up to watch Giles polishing his glasses and Buffy still picking at her nails. He gave a lopsided smile and decided to focus on the positive, they were closer to her than they had been since she went missing, and if they were closer to her, they were closer to getting her back. So he put on his best 'lets get to work' voice and got ready to get his best friend back, once and for all.

"So, I think we need a plan."

/\\/\\/\\

A/N: So, there we go, I updated, and I'm sorry if it isn't what people wanted due to the lack of anything Spillowish but I think we were due a chapter in Sunnydale just so you knew what was going on. But I promise next chapter we will have Spike, Willow and the rest of the vampire crew

Next chapter: Planning of having them settling down into, of course, the Crawford Street Mansion, Willow finally crashing down on the reality that she's close to her friends and the fact that Spike is feeding in the small town of Sunnydale where she grew up withmost of the people that lived there and getting slightly angry. Which may just get her into a little bit of trouble with our favourite bleached vampire...


End file.
